Should newbie include work hours in jewelry price?

[Keia]

I thought that your cross is small before I read it's 45mm. That picture somehow makes it looking tiny in my opinion.

Aye, the website server is not very good. You have to click on the photo when you're in the description to bring up the bigger photo with extra pictures. I really need a new server to be honest. The other website skins they offer that allow bigger photos by default are far too messy looking :/ Thankyou for this convo by the way, I've really enjoyed speaking with you and you've given me so much to think about =)

[medusa]

Gosh, going by the replies I'm way under charging then :/ Thing is, going by todays economy if I did bring up my prices to match Peter's formula (just for example), the exact amount I would sell would be nothing =( Confused at how this works.
It would also feel alittle cheeky as I'm not professionally trained.
Thankyou for the thought provoking thread.

the way I see it is if you make a silver pendant with a decent stone set in it and a professional jeweller is selling something similar for say £100, then that is roughly what you should charge. Even if it means that it's taken you 20 hours to make and the pro only 3 hours. The pro makes more profit because they work faster.

If you undercharge, say just the cost of materials and tenner on top for labour no matter how many hours because you don't think you should charge more as an amateur, then not only are you working for nothing, but you aren't actually doing the pro jewellers a favour either.

[ShinyLauren]

^^^^^^
What Liz said!

I take far longer than proper professional jewellers to make stuff, as I only do jewellery part time and like to faff about for ages with emery paper and files getting things as perfect as I can so spend way too long on each piece. However, I'd like jewellery to be my full time business in the future and am trying to start pricing as such. I couldn't use the formula for hourly rate, as everything takes me so much longer to do than it should, but I am getting faster. So yes, I compare things I make to professional jewellers that I aspire to and try to price accordingly.

I may not sell as much as I would if I priced lower, but I feel like when I do sell something that it's worth it! Also, because I only do jewellery part time, there's a limit on how many pieces I can produce.

[SilverBouillon]

Today I received Anastasia Young's book The Workbench Guide where she covers a bit about pricing.
The one thing I found interesting is to charge enough to be able to make two more of the same piece.

[Keia]

Medusa - I don't really sell any of my silver. I get about one silver sale a month if that, so it's not like I'm taking business away from the pro's because I never get the sales, else I would tend to agree with that sentiment

[ps_bond]

It's not a question of taking it away from the pros, the worry is more devaluing the market. The former is healthy competition

[Keia]

Yeah I don't want to do that. It hadn't even crossed my mind to be honest. I'll sort out my prices soon as

[solitarysmagick]

I tend to use a few different methods when pricing. I will work out a price based on materials x 2 or 3 depending on what it is (hard to find beads for example I would charge a bit more for) plus an hourly wage and see what comes out, but then also go by how much I'd be willing to pay for the item, and ask friends and family to get a bit of feedback. I also try to include postage and packing costs in the final price as free postage is always a good selling point.

I started making tree of life pendants before Xmas and put them up at £25 each and sold a fair number. A lot of people said I should charge more so I tried a few at £30 and had hardly any sales, so sometimes its a case of pricing a little lower than average and selling pieces, or charge more and sell less. I also tend to look at similar items on sites like etsy to get an idea of what other people charge and try to fit my pricing somewhere in the middle!

[ps_bond]

OK, here's a worked example -

I'm currently part-way through making a forged bangle. There's £24 of silver in it, it'll probably have taken me 2 hours by the time it is fully polished (although the first bit of forming the bangle was slower than it should have been) and it'll need hallmarking and a box (call it £4 in total - I'll batch up the hallmarking).

So materials of £28 total; I'm including electricity & consumables in the hourly rate.
At minimum wage, that is £12.40 (rounded) in labour costs.

Using the formula I mentioned, this gives a wholesale price of about £49. Which then means a retail price of near enough £100.

At £10/hour, this rises to £57.60 wholesale, £115 retail.
£20/hour: £81.60 wholesale, £163 retail.

A *mass produced* bangle of a similar weight retails for around £100 - this is handmade (and not as simple as the one I found while googling). It is your (collective!) responsibility to ensure that customers understand what they're getting, that it does not compare to the mass produced stuff. If you don't, you create an expectation that you're prepared to work for nothing, and your work is valued accordingly.

This - as I keep banging on - is NOT a standard economic model, this is a luxury goods market. DO NOT drop your prices to increase sales.

Have a look at this book - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Setting-Succ.../dp/1408130440 - for some more info (and a lot of the same rant I'm afraid!)

Oh, and a quote from the recent Assay Office London newsletter - "silver is the new 9k"

[bilythepink]

Thank you Peter for the 'rant' and, while I have to say it is really hard as a 'newbie' to have the confidence to sell at a similar price to the pro's, I agree 100% with your comments. I recently sold a pair of earrings to a lady who turned out to be a 'promoter of the arts' and, although she was delighted with her bargain purchase, she told me to double my prices and to stop insulting my fellow jewellers - talk about a backhanded compliment. Pity she didn't feel obligated to pay me double though